{"id":3380,"date":"2010-08-23T17:58:47","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T16:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=3380"},"modified":"2010-08-23T18:00:36","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T17:00:36","slug":"how-has-the-internet-changed-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=3380","title":{"rendered":"How has the Internet changed you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been a series of articles recently speculating about whether use of the Internet is changing the way our brains are wired and how we think. There was this article <\/a>in the “Observer” and another one<\/a> in the “Guardian”.<\/p>\n

The timing is partly the fact that summer is such a quiet period for hard news and partly the publication of a new book by cyber expert Nicholas Carr<\/a> entitled “The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains”<\/a>. Carr argues that the Internet’s “cacophony of stimuli” and “crazy quilt” of information have given rise to “cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning”.<\/p>\n

It seems that young people in particular are reluctant to read books or indulge in exercises that require time and application. It may not be just younger users of the Net who are finding that their minds are changing.<\/p>\n

On his blog Rough Type<\/a>, Carr quotes the Net guru Nicholas Negroponte as confessing: \u201cI love the iPad, but my ability to read any long-form narrative has more or less disappeared, as I am constantly tempted to check e-mail, look up words or click through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this you?<\/p>\n

I have three Internet-enabled devices:\u00a0 my PC in the study, my iPad in the sitting room or at my meetings, and my iPhone in my jacket or shirt pocket at all times.\u00a0 So I’m a massive user of the Net.<\/p>\n

But I still devour newspapers every day and read lots of books.\u00a0 Is this unusual or typical?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"